Monday, 7 August 2017

We recently had a great trip to the Pewsey Downs to look at farmland birds and other downland wildlife, with a bit of human history thrown in for good measure.

We had not left the car park and had managed to see a number of the hoped for priority farmland birds with corn bunting, yellow wagtail, whitethroat, skylark and linnet all see well in the morning sunshine.

Male yellow wagtial

We'd had a discussion about whether everyone had seen a yellow wagtail. I'd said if you're not sure I'd think you hadn't. It turned out I was right, who wouldn't remember seeing one of these fellows!

As we carried on soon saw stonechat and tree sparrow, the latter again high on our list of hoped for species.

Female Stonechat

We moved on to spend some time contemplating the human usage of the wider landscape by looking at the line of a Roman Road by some round barrows. The road runs by the barrows and was built c1,800 years ago. The barrows were older than this when the road was built past them. Amazing stuff.

We stopped to enjoy the views to the north, in the distance was the Cotswolds and we could almost pick out where the guys were staying, c1 hour away by car.

There were decent numbers of butterfly on the wing also, with marbled white especially present in good numbers.

Marbled white

As we returned to the car park along the escarpment we watched the raptors there enjoying the updraft, buzzard, red kite, kestrel and sparrowhawk were all present. (NA)